New York Times closer to charging for online content

In May, a NY Times staff writer, Jennifer Lee, via her Twitter page, discussed what occurred during a meeting with shareholders and explained that the company was currently "exploring a new online financial strategy" that would implement membership levels. Each level would have different access to content with obviously the most expensive having full access to the entire site.

Today, according to Bloomberg, the Times is closer than ever to implementing the charge, a $5 USD monthly fee for access to the site. NYTimes.com is currently the most popular newspaper site in America.

Although the move will bring in much needed added revenue to make up for continued losses in ad sales, some critics have their doubts.
“The question here for consumers is the psychological barrier of now paying when you were getting it for free before, and you’re going to lose some readers as a result,” says Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell. “The New York Times will also have to evaluate what this means for ad rates as they lose readers.”

11 user comments

The online content was never up to the level of the printed version. 5 USD a month is not going to break anybody still holding a job, but if they are exploring that possibility, a Zinio type digital delivery sounds better to me, with the ADVERTISEMENT on the online HTML version a Google/Yahoo/Bing type, which uses your IP address to set up local advertisement.

NYTimes.com used to charge for their content. It failed. Then they went free and became popular. Now they think since they are popular they can charge? Sorry, plenty of national papers and national news stations choose from that are free. Most have realized that advertising is the way to go.

Various sources try to charge these days.
Personally if I'm after a particular story I just move on and find the story elsewhere for free.
There's about a zillion credible serious & free sources out there - and almost all directly link to the factual source too.

In an era of so much 'free' info on the net moving to charge is really doing nothing but cutting your advertisers off from a vast passing market which will only go elsewhere.
Seems pretty short-sighted & stupid to me.

Originally posted by Interestx: Various sources try to charge these days.
Personally if I'm after a particular story I just move on and find the story elsewhere for free.
There's about a zillion credible serious & free sources out there - and almost all directly link to the factual source too.

In an era of so much 'free' info on the net moving to charge is really doing nothing but cutting your advertisers off from a vast passing market which will only go elsewhere.
Seems pretty short-sighted & stupid to me.

I think the short sighted thing was them thinking that online and print could be financed identically. Alot of papers that were giving this stuff away free are now bankrupt and closed down :(

Originally posted by Interestx: Various sources try to charge these days.
Personally if I'm after a particular story I just move on and find the story elsewhere for free.
There's about a zillion credible serious & free sources out there - and almost all directly link to the factual source too.

In an era of so much 'free' info on the net moving to charge is really doing nothing but cutting your advertisers off from a vast passing market which will only go elsewhere.
Seems pretty short-sighted & stupid to me.

I think the short sighted thing was them thinking that online and print could be financed identically. Alot of papers that were giving this stuff away free are now bankrupt and closed down :(

this is whats going to happen, theyll try to charge, people will hit the begger page from digg and not pay for crap, then nyt will go back to free AGAIN.

dont waste your time making nyt.com a pay site again, people will NOT pay for news stories theyll be able to read for free the next day.

EDIT: varnull, the nyt is probably the least state censored paper in america. bush himself asked the editor not to run the wiretap story and they did anyway. and mob politics are small time, the nyt only reports the hugest stuff they leave the rest of the wise guy gossip to the post, daily, and those worthless free papers that crackheads hand out in front of the subway.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 15 Jul 2009 @ 20:14